Friday, August 17, 2007 Prosecutor orders filing of libel case v. Lastimosa
THE Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office has recommended the filing of a libel case against broadcaster and newspaper columnist Leo Lastimosa over his columns against Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.
The office overturned the recommendation of a three-man panel that sought the dismissal of the complaint.
Lastimosa, in an interview, said he will exhaust all legal remedies so that the case will not be filed in court.
He said he will file a motion for reconsideration. Lastimosa said this was what he agreed with his lawyer during their talk when the complaint was filed in April.
“We will fight it out up to the Department of Justice because we are convinced that there is no basis for the filing of the case in court,” Lastimosa told Sun.Star Cebu.
Gov. Garcia’s camp yesterday welcomed the ruling.
Prove case
“The resolution speaks for itself. Let the wheels of justice take its regular course. It will be hard work as now is the time to exhaustively and intelligently prove our case,” said lawyer Rory John Sepulveda, Capitol consultant on information.
“We filed the case believing that the interests of Gwendolyn Garcia as governor, as a mother, as woman were violated, we remain in that position and we will prove that in court,” Sepulveda said.
In a three-page resolution, Cebu City Prosecutor Fernando Gubalane revised the recommendation of the three-person panel of prosecutors that handled the preliminary investigation of the case.
In their June 18 resolution, the panel of prosecutors, headed by Assistant Prosecutor Lineth Lapinid, ruled for the dismissal of the case.
The panel said Lastimosa indeed issued statements considered as defamatory and libelous when he asked through his column in The Freeman if the governor was already starting to save herself from the Asean Summit controversy.
Insinuations
The panel also considered as libelous Lastimosa’s statement that Garcia has reasons to be afraid that the public clamor for an accounting of the estimated two billion peso expenditure pertaining to the Asean Summit would directly lead to the Capitol.
Panel members said they were convinced that the statements are a “veiled insinuation” that Garcia is guilty of certain offenses.
“While there were no accusations hurled by respondent against complaint in the article, these statements tend to induce readers to suppose...that Garcia, as the highest official of Cebu province-which hosted the Asean Summit, was directly responsible for the monumental expenses incurred by the government brought about, among others, by the overpricing of the lampposts that lit Cebu’s major thoroughfares during the international gathering.
“These imputations do tend to cause complainant dishonor, discredit or contempt and could be considered defamatory,” read the panel’s resolution.
But members of the panel said the libelous statements are not actionable because there is no proof of malice on the part of Lastimosa when he wrote those statements.
Gubalane, however, reversed the recommendation and ruled for the filing of the case.
He said there is probable cause to charge Lastimosa. He said the jurisprudence cited by the panel on the presence of malice is for purposes of conviction and not of filing.
“In the present case, we are still at the preliminary investigation stage where only existence of probable cause is required for purposes of filing the information in court.”
Premature
“Once the information will be filed in court, it would then be complainant’s burden to present proof beyond reasonable doubt as to the existence of actual malice and for the trial to evaluate such evidence in order to render a verdict of conviction,” he said Gubalane said to declare at this stage of the proceeding that the existence of actual malice has not been established beyond reasonable doubt would be premature. He said this issue involves evidence on which only the court can “competently pass upon and decide.”
Guabalane also said the statement by Lastimosa that the governor was a “fair weather” friend imputes a vice or defect upon Garcia. This, he said, unduly exposed the governor to public hatred. (KNT)
